I've already tried adding screenshots of all the games which are also on TGOD - I think those were about 200 games. In case I've missed any, let me know.

Small box scans are pretty useless, although larger ones are good for bringing back the memories of seeing those games sitting on your shelf, or coming home with them from the store.

One thing that confuses me about your mirror is the screenshots issue, why get new ones? You already have multiple screenshots for most(all?) the games you have here, so why not just use those? You could either manually choose a shot for each one, or automate it (ie, have the server grab the 4th image for each current entry & use it as the main image for the mirror).

In case anyone had any doubts about our mirror here being alright the the original site owner: http://www.fringer.org/?p=416.

Obviously, this new revival project still needs a lot of planning (since the 'official' place for this planning is Google, I won't follow it - big brother ahoy), but at least there is a definite word now.

In case you're wondering what'll happen to our mirror: I'll keep it up as long as necessary, i.e. until the new site really kicks off. I will still be accepting screenshot contributions to enhance it (which, in case you're wondering, is still worth it; the new project is still in "we'll do it" phase - a long way from completion; and finally, nothing will stop you from submitting the same screenshots to that project as well once it's online, so nothing will go to waste), but I will not use that Excel file to change the database here (there are only neglectable differences which don't make a structural difference to the frontent, e.g. game title and 'aka' title are mashed into one here). I will not post the docs, but I might add the box scans (though I'm seriously not sure what the point of such a tiny box image is - never quite understood that even on the real site). Once again: This is not meant to b e a real site, so it'll stay 'barebones'.

Thanks for sorting out the certificate problem.

It may not be what you requested but the Internet Archive contains many of HotU's boxscan pictures, so long as you use the old HotH URL of www.theunderdogs.org.
ie. http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.theunderdogs.org/

Better pages, in that many boxscans are shown on one page, can be found here
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.theunderdogs.org/featured.php

For the modern take on a common boxscan check out
http://web.archive.org/web/20060612210010/www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=5306

Finally, in the same vein as the above boxscan, here is a very common old-style HotH screenshot
http://web.archive.org/web/20010110142500/www.theunderdogs.org/game.php?name=A+Mind+Forever+Voyaging

Heh, I was going to post about that certificate warning way back when you first posted that link here. I had clicked it & gotten the warning (I didn't have ssl or tsl or any other such turned on on my end, and didn't type anything in the url bar, I just clicked the link you posted here in the forum), but it completely slipped my mind.

..Of course, it's a moot point now anyway, so... *shrug*

Agreed. I'll add any screenshots (in the style HOTUD did, i.e. one screenshot per game) which are sent in, provided they're put under the same licence as the rest of that site's contents.

Maybe they don't mention it because you "just" mirror the tests and not the downloads. For me it's a fine solution anyway to just mirror the tests. OK maybe screenshots would be an nice addition.

Indeed. It's ludicrous enough that an update like mirroring HOTUD isn't even worth mentioning to them (obviously, neither is the all-too-common event of a site turning nine years old). And then, just a few days later, a newspost completely made of whining how HOTUD's contents are lost:

Hello? Anybody home?

And proof that Abandonware Ring doesn't check its updates

Confirmed. On my Firefox it works now without tweaking settings.

Finally! I think I found the culprit - the site should now be either fully encrypted or unencryted depending on how it's called. Thanks for your patience.

As the one who brought this up, this happens with the http page (I hadn't even thought of trying https), and I am using SeaMonkey 1.1.14 with no alterations made to the default SSL and TLS security settings. Does this shed any more light on the matter?

Don't know how Firefox saved the certificate for you - it could have made it available to other browsers as well...

Just tried an alternative Browser called Konqueror. It's the browser that shipped with KDE. There is no such Error when I use it.
So it seems to be an Firefox related problem.

Hm... well, neither the English nor the German news post point to anything SSL encrypted. Checking the server config, there's nothing overriding anything protocol related for that path, either. I obviously have the certificate stored on all my computers, but checking it today from work (where I definitely don't have the certificate in question), there wasn't anything like that warning, either.

Obviously, there is something redirecting you guys to an encrypted connection, but I can't fix what I can't find. I knew CrapFox would bite me with its nonsensical certificate handling some time

I had this notice too. I used the link out of the News on the Main Page. But now I "teached" my browser, that this site isn't untrusted.

I allmost forgot. Thanks for conserving the content MC!

Why is everybody trying to use SSL on that subdirectory? It's already the second time I hear this today...

Anyway, there are two very simple solutions as there actually isn't a problem at all. Either just access the site without SSL (i.e. http instead of https) or accept the self-signed certificate.

Seriously folks - a self-signed SSL certificate isn't the slightest bit less secure than one signed by some 'authority' from the technical point of view. The encryption is exactly the same! The only difference is that nobody else vouches for the site's identity, so you might run into a man-in-the-middle attack with someone spying on your traffic - but it's never worse than just using unencrypted HTTP. If anyone wants to confirm the certificate before accepting it, send me an e-mail and I'll give you the fingerprint.

Edit: Now that I'm not quite as sleepy anymore, it occurs to me you all might be following some sort of link to https://.... Can't seem to be able to find it, though. Could you let me know?

Whenever I check out www.goodolddays.net/hotud/ I get the warning "Website Certified by an Unknown Authority" - "Unable to verify the identity of www.goodolddays.net as a trusted site."

http://www.goodolddays.net/hotud/

I'm neither trying to build a 'new' Home of the Underdogs, nor do I see this as an actual long-term solution. I'm still hoping for the real site to come back in some form. Once that happens, this temporary reference point will disappear again.

What I did was write a simple Perl script which opens the HTML review pages one by one, parses them to extract all the relevant game information and write all that back into a database. The contents of that database are displayed with this simple frontend to allow listing and search methods as they were on the real Home of the Underdogs. I haven't double-checked each game entry, so if you notice any errors, please let me know.

So there still is hope for Hotu. I would be gratefull to hear any news regarding their rebirth.